My husband and I were on our way to divorce. And given that, we had to move out of the large house we had owned for 12 years. I was beyond sad because part of me felt like it was just starting to feel like home. It had taken years to make the house into our home and then, all of a sudden, it fell to me to disassemble it, box it up and separate it into our respecitve Pods.

On the day I began to tear my life apart I looked around. Where had all this come from?

When we moved into the house, we had taken a truck arond to my office, then to my husband’s office, then swung around again to our apartment and yes, to our storage space to collect the myriad things we would need to furnish this big house. When we got it all in one place, our collection of tables, chairs, couches, beds, lamps, dishes, artwork and appliances was not enough to make our new, large space seem cozy and warm.

So what did we do? What every American learns to do: we shopped. And shopped. And shopped. Until the house was filled with furniture and lamps and vases and plants and rugs and tvs and all manner of “necessities” that we purportedly loved.

The day I began packing it up I noted how many things we had purchased and never used, or used only once or twice. My husband’s father had been famous for hopping in his car and heading to the store to buy not one, but TWO of everything “just in case” and unfortunately the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree­.

It would take me 8 months to sort, organize, discard, “Swap Shop” and pack up that house; deciding who should get what share of the 10 deck chairs, 9 stainless steel pots & pans, 8 hoses, 7 sets of dinnerware, 6 gallons of windshield washer fluid, 5 televisions, 4 couches, 3 cars, 2 mowers and the trampoline in the back yard.

In the end, just like the marriage, a lot of what we had told ourselves we “loved” we really hadn’t loved, and had to let go of.